December 11th

You know how everyone's keen on choosing the "word of the year?" How Oxford Dictionaries picked "rizz" for 2023 (but dont get bummed if you haven't heard it, because they picked "goblin mode" for 2022 and I swear I never heard that one uttered once that whole year)? Well, I do believe that if you write a blog every day, you are entitled to pick a word as well. I have one for December 2023! Ocean hereby proclaims it to be "burning."

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Very early this morning, before there is even a hint of dawn, Ed and I are lost in our world of computer searches. And I am thinking -- I do so love the phrase "mixed blessing." It's as if a divine being has bestowed on you a gift beyond all gifts, a blessing, but has also placed hot burning coals in your path toward realizing its bounty.

Ed's newfound interest in my oven and stove top troubles is a mixed blessing.

To recap -- the farmhouse stove top is gas powered and it is unvented, so that we are guaranteed a steady flow of particles into the air. "We" perhaps is the wrong designation. 99.9% of stove top cooking is done by me. (Ed is a committed micro-waver.) We've compensated by running an air purifier and by purchasing an electric induction burner. Nonetheless, last night I had, in addition to the induction burner, four gas burners going. Sunday dinners are like that. 

Additionally, we are struggling with the oven's problems, which I've groaned about since we purchased the damn thing twelve years ago. It's now being addressed by Ed as he mobilizes his energies to finding quirky solutions to solve the irregular heating patterns. 

Do you cook big meals for your tribe? Have you been doing it for more than half a century? And maybe you're skilled? Like, for example, maybe your city's high end restaurant hired you to cook with them for several years? Followed by baking with them for yet another set of year? In other words, you're not a dunce in the kitchen maybe? And just one more thing: maybe your partner has never, ever cooked a dinner for a group of people in his 73 years of life? Maybe he's a little idiosyncratic in his tastes, too? Like dumping Chalula spicy Mexican sauce on his dinner every single night and adding raw onion to it as well? So, quirky, maybe? 

Well now, you tell me how good is it to have said person standing over your shoulder while you're working five pots on all those burners, telling you things like "put a lid on the pasta!" "lower the boil!" "decrease the water in that pot!" because said person wants to show you how there are ways to decrease particles in the air, and you've been doing it all wrong and by the way, here's an article on the internet, on the internet no less, telling you that you dont need much water or a rolling boil for pasta after all!

That was yesterday, though the article showed up in my inbox this morning. Off to a good start!

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I fed the animals in a rush...

I had an early morning appointment with my allergist. He wants to strike that line from my medical charts ("allergic to penicillin"), because he thinks it was a faulty conclusion, made many decades ago, and I may someday need penicillin, and it's best to have it as an option when all bacterial hell breaks loose.

While in his office, swallowing one tablet of amoxicillin after another, I chatted about allergies. I told him about Ed's allergic asthmatic reaction to my beloved winter candles. He laughed and said: "two things: first of all, my wife loves the scented candles and every once in a while I gag on a fragrance she burns. So, I know the feeling. But, without knowing your partner, I am going to venture to say anyway that he is not having an allergic asthmatic reaction. He likely has vocal cord dysfunction and it likely makes him somewhat sensitive to certain smells. It feels like asthma, but it's not. You think your breathing is constricted and you rasp, but it really is not the same as asthma, nor an allergy."

So I ask -- is it the candle or the fragrance that's the problem? And he tells me -- almost for sure the specific fragrance. Candles, unless they're made of some toxic stuff, aren't going to do that to you. 

Bottom line: I am not allergic to penicillin and Ed is likely not allergic to the burning of candles. 

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An allergy test takes time, so I eat breakfast very late and without Ed, who is working with his machines today.

And it's an especially unhealthy, sweet breakfast and I don't care! I'm in that kind of a mood.

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Last night, as Ed threw out solutions to fix the oven problem (put bricks inside, call the manufacturer, etc etc) and I was cleaning up after the dinner, thereby losing my patience by the minute, he saw my exasperation and said -- okay, just get a new oven. We're done.

The last time he said this ("just do it") was when I wanted to get a couple of pigmy goats. He was so opposed to the idea that he went along, physically went along, accompanying me to goat farms, searching out goats for sale. But he was not on board in spirit. And he knew I would come across a stumbling block which I would not be able or willing to overcome and the project would fizzle and that is exactly what happened. I could not get a fence up on time for the arrival of the goats on which I had actually placed a deposit. I could not put up a fence by myself. I could not build a shack for them. Not without spending great sums of money which I do not have. So, no goats.

I swear that this was his strategy with the stove. To swap out the gas for the electric, we would need to rewire. We would need to get rid of this stove. We would have to find in a timely fashion the new one and have it here and installed without a glitch. All this would cost lots of money and time and it is not a project I would want to carry out on my own.

So, our burning issues have dominated our December discussions and, therefore, my Ocean posts. Do I even realize that it's December 11th, just two weeks before Christmas Day??

I wrap two more gifts and put on the music really really loudly. The cats run upstairs and lock themselves (figuratively) in the bedroom.

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In the afternoon I pick up Snowdrop. What a breath of fresh air! My attention focuses on her and her joys and woes (no woes today). 

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Food preparation this evening is all about leftovers and the microwave. Smooth sailing. We do not have to talk about burning particles and erratic temperatures. 

In the meantime, Ed is with his detective tools, sticking bricks in the oven, measuring, counting. And then -- I know how to fix the particles problem! You boil the water on the induction burner. Put in the pasta. Take it off the burner. It'll keep on cooking! Put on your next pot, heat it up, take it off. We'll get some cozies to cover the pots. You move them around. That way, you dont have to use the gas burners at all. 

He got no smile out of me for that one. Not until later, when we were done with the burning subject of...stoves. 

With so much love...